Jane Grigson Award shortlist reveals 'new perspectives on food'

The shortlist for the inaugural Jane Grigson Trust Award for new food writers has been announced, recognising forthcoming debuts from Chatto & Windus, Profile Books and Bloomsbury.

The £2,000 Jane Grigson Trust Award (JGT) 2016, set up in memory of British food writer Jane Grigson, aims to "support food writing in the widest sense". It will be awarded to a first-time writer of a book on food, unrestricted by genre (including cookbook, memoir, travel and history), that has been commissioned but has yet to be published. 

The "particularly pleasing" shortlist of three books, encompassing a "rich variety" of writing about food, are: The Magic Bayleaf by Alex Andreou, a food memoir of growing up in Greece (Chatto & Windus, due to publish late 2017); A Greedy Queen: Eating with Queen Victoria by Annie Gray, a history of nineteenth-century royal kitchens (Profile Books, due to publish Spring 2017); and On the Side by Ed Smith, a cookbook celebrating side dishes (Bloomsbury, due to publish Spring 2017).

Andreou is a Guardian and New Statesman writer, actor and cook. He said at the time his "memoir of life and manual of love" was announced in October that it would share the story of "a woman losing pieces of her identity, in the midst of a country struggling to rediscover its own, of chopped parsley and generational shifts, of prickly pear and migration, of bay leaves and caring for a parent with dementia".

Gray is a historian, cook and broadcaster who specialises in the history of food and dining in Britain from 1600 onwards. Her editor Rebecca Gray said A Greedy Queen would involve "a serious amount of new research, characteristic strong opinions and inside-out knowledge of the period", as well as "lots of cake".

Smith, finally, is a food writer and blogger at rocketandsquash.com and creative director at Cannon & Cannon, a supplier and championing of British charcuterie based in Borough Market. He has also written for and shared recipes with the Guardian.

The judging panel for the 2016 award comprises cookery writer Geraldine Holt in the role of chair of the judges; Jill Norman, Jane Grigson’s former editor at Penguin and a trustee of the JGT; Donald Sloan, chair of Oxford Gastronomica, Oxford Brookes University’s centre for the study of food, drink and culture, and also a trustee of the JGT; Rowley Leigh, author, chef and Financial Times cookery columnist; and Bee Wilson, a Sunday Telegraph food columnist and author of four books on food-related topics.

Chair of judges Holt commented: “All of the entries for the award were of an encouragingly high standard. The writers displayed visions of their subjects that were both authoritative and engaging - and all were a pleasure to read. The foundation of Jane Grigson's own remarkable body of work was extensive research. So it is fitting that in this inaugural year of the award the three short-listed authors have delved so deeply into their own subjects in order to create books that are both enjoyable and enlightening for the reader and valuable and worthwhile new perspectives on food."

The winner will be announced at an award ceremony at Quo Vadis restaurant in Soho on Monday 14th March.